A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

$22 HORATIUS. HORATIUS.
the ~poetic and conventional faith in the gods with of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, and per.
decent respect, but with no depth of devotion. haps the Satires of Juvenal, the most perfect
There is more sincerity in a sort of vague sense of and most original form of Roman verse. The
the providential government, to which he attributes title of the Art of Poetry for the Epistle to
his escape from some of the perils of his life, his the Pisos, is as old as Quintilian, but it is now
flight from Philippi, his preservation from a wolf agreed that it was not intended for a complete
in the Sabine wood (Carm. i. 22. 9), and from the theory of the poetic art. Wieland's very probable
falling of a tree in his own grounds. (Catrm. ii. 13. notion that it was intended to dissuade one of the
i 7, 27, iii. 8. 6.) In another well-known passage, younger Pisos from devoting himself to poetry, for
he professes to have been startled into religious emo- which he had little genius, or at least to suggest
tion, and to have renounced a godless philosophy, the difficulties of attaining to perfection, was
from hearing thunder in a cloudless sky. anticipated by Colman in the preface to his transThe philosophy of Horace was, in like manner, ]ation. (Colman's Works, vol. iii.; compare Wiethat of a man of the world. He playfully alludes land's Horazens Briefe, ii. 185.)
to his Epicureanism, but it was practical rather The works of Horace became popular very soon.
than speculative Epicureanism. His mind, indeed, In the time of Juvenal they were, with the poems
was not in the least speculative. Common life of Virgil, the common school book. (Juv. Sat.
wisdom was his study, and to this he brought a vii. 227.)
quickness of observation, a sterling common sense, The chronology of the Horatian poems is of great.
and a passionless judgment, which have made his importance, as illustrating the life, the times, and
works the delight and the unfailing treasure of the writings of the poet. The earlier attempts by
felicitous quotation to practical men. Tan. Faber, by Dacier, and by Masson, in his
The love of Horace for the country, and his in- elaborate Vie d'florace, to assign each poem to
tercourse- with the sturdy and uncorrupted Sabine its particular year in the poet's life, were crushed
peasantry, seems to have kept alive an honest free- by the dictatorial condemnation of Bentley, who in
dom and boldness of thought; while his familiarity his short preface laid down a scheme of dates,
with the great, his delight in good society, main- both for the composition and the publication of each
tained that exquisite urbanity, that general book. The authority of Bentley has been in geamenity, that ease without forwardness, that re- neral acquiesced in by English scholars. The late
spect without servility, which induced Shaftesbury Dr. Tate, with admiration approaching to idolatry,
to call him the most gentlemanlike of the Roman almost resented every departure from the. edict of
poets. his master; and in his Horatius Restitutus published
In these qualities lie the strength and excellence the whole works in the order established by Bentley.
of Horace as a poet. His Odes want the higher in- Mr. Fynes Clinton, though in general favouring the
spirations of lyric verse-the deep religious senti- Bentleian chronology, admits that in some cases his
ment, the absorbing personality,the abandonment to dates are at variance with facts. (Fasti Hellenici,
overpowering and irresistible emotion, the unstudied vol. iii. p. 219.) Nor were the first attempts to
harmony of thought and language, the absolute overthrow the Bentleian chi'onology bySanadon and
mnity of imagination and passion which belongs to others (Jani's was almost a translation of Masson's
the noblest lyric song. His amatory verses are ex- life) successful in shaking the arch-critic's auquisitely graceful,, but they have no strong ardour, thority among the higher class of scholars.
no deep tenderness, nor even much of light and Recently, however, the question has been rejoyous gaiety. But as works of refined art, of the opened with extraordinary activity by the conmost skilful felicities of language and of measure, of tinental scholars. At least five new and complete
translucent expression, and of agreeable images, schemes have been framed, which attempt to assign
embodied in words which imprint themselves in- a precise period almost to every one of the poems
delibly on the memory, they are unrivalled. Accord- of Horace. 1. Quaestiones Horatianae, a C. Kirching to Quintilian, Horace was almost the only ner, Lips. 1834. 2. Histoire de la Vie et des
Roman lyric' poet worth reading. Poesies d'Horace, par M. le Baron Walckenaer,
As a satirist Horace is without the lofty moral 2 vols. Paris, 1840. 3. Fasti Honatiani, scripindignation, the fierce vehemence ofinvective, which sit C. Franke, 1839. 4. The article Horatius,
cbaracterised the later satirists. In the Epodes there in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopidie, by G. F.
is bitterness provoked, it should seem, by some per- Grotefend. 5. Qulintus Horatius Elaccus als Mensch
sonal hatred, or sense of injury, and the ambition of uand Dichter, von Dr. W. E. Weber, Jena, 1844.
imitating Archilocus; but in these he seems to have Besides these writers, others, as Heindorf (in his
exhausted all the malignity and violence of his edition of the Satires), C. Passow, in Vita Horat.
temper. In the Satires, it is the folly rather than (prefixed to a German translation of the Epistles),
the wickedness of vice, which he touches with such C. Vanderbourg, Preface and Notes to French
playful skill. Nothing can surpass the keenness translation of the Odes, and Weichert, in Poetar.
of his observation, or his ease of expression: it is Latin. Reliq., have entered into this question.
the finestcomedy of manners,in a descriptive instead The discrepancies among these ingenious writers
of a dramatic form. If the Romans had been a may satisfy every judicious reader that they have
theatrical people, and the age of Augustus a dra- attempted an impossibility; that there are no inmatic age, Horace, as far at least as the perception ternal grounds, either historical or aesthetic, which
of character, would have been an exquisite dra- can, without the most fanciful and arbitrary proofs,
matic writer. determine the period in the life of Horace to which
But the Epistles are the most perfect of the belong many of his poems, especially of his Odes.
Horatian poetry - the poetry of manners and On the other hand, it is clear that the chronology
society, the- beauty of which consists in a kind of of Bentley must submit to very important modiideality. of common sense and practical wisdom. fications.
The Epistles of Horace are with the Poem The general outline of his scheme as to theperiod